SMALL HOLDERS AS TENANTS 263 



cost, thus being able to make proportionately lower 

 charges to its tenants. 



And tenants under this system the small holders 

 would be to their own distinct advantage. With 

 security of tenure and guarantee of compensation for 

 improvements, they might well be content, from an 

 economic standpoint. It is true they would not have 

 the sentimental satisfaction of calling themselves 

 landed proprietors. On the other hand, they would 

 be able to keep the whole of their bit of money for 

 the purchase of stock, implements, seeds, and other 

 necessaries for the profitable development of the 

 holding, and the combination with which they started 

 would be most useful in enabling them to effect 

 economies in this direction. None of their capital 

 would be buried in the land at the moment it was 

 most wanted. They would have only nominal transfer 

 charges, and no lawyer's bills to pay before they could 

 enter into possession. They would know that they 

 could stop on the holding as long as they pleased, 

 provided they were not guilty of gross neglect. They 

 would pay rent as rent, instead of rent in the form of 

 mortgage charges, but they would not have to pay 

 for various things which peasant proprietors must 

 provide for themselves ; and when, in the course of 

 time, they had so far prospered that they could take 

 any larger holding that might be available elsewhere, 

 they would simply give notice to leave the plot they 

 had outgrown, secure the compensation to which they 

 were entitled, and start afresh on the larger plot, with 

 none of the trouble and expense which they would be 

 put to if they had to sell out one lot and buy another. 



There is the greater need for such economy and 

 simplification because, where the margin of profit from 

 cultivation is so small, and the competition in the sale 



